New Insights Into How Babies Learn Language

摘要

When it comes to understanding language, it's a phonetic jungle out there. Adult speech is far from uniform, with countless subtle variations on each sound, such as the "a" in "cat" or the "o" in "cot." But somewhere a line must be drawn, separating the cats from the cots. So, as children learn language, they must master which phonetic differences' to pay attention to and which to ignore. A paper in this issue of Science and one in last week's issue of Nature shed some new light on how babies gain this key skill.